


They'll Listen

by DuskDragon39



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: All art referenced is both my own and real, Deals, Gen, Genderqueer Character, I wrote this while procrastinating on another fanfic, Sometimes they'll listen, Watch who you tell your story to, good job me, stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 08:54:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19826749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuskDragon39/pseuds/DuskDragon39
Summary: Some days you cross her path.Twice you find them in the library.One day you ask him a question.(A student at Elsewhere and another who will listen. Never trade yourself away.)





	They'll Listen

Some days you find her under the maple tree outside of the Library. She’s the only one there; the Library is too close for most, and the acrid scent of citrus hovers around the building like a ominous and displeased cloud. 

She sketches. 

Once, you stop and ask to see what she’s drawing. The page she shows you is carved in half with a thick black divide, the world on one side of the paper bleeding and dissolving into another. She pulls out her earbuds and smiles at you. She doesn’t say anything. 

The picture unsettles you, and you thank her. Leave. 

Another time, you find them in the Library itself, surrounded by a pile of pencils, pens, and charcoal. The dust from their picture has stained the table around them a dark, grainy, black. You think that the Library should have been upset; the new assistant is near paranoid sometimes about the mess. When you ask them, they just laugh. 

“I’ve been here longer than she has,” they laugh. It’s the first time you’ve heard them speak, and it’s strangely deep for someone of their stature. A well-dressed Death stares out at you from their paper. Briefly you can feel the slice of his scythe across your skin, can hear the caw of a raven and feel the strange texture of long-dead bone under your fingertips. 

“In the Library?” you ask. 

“No,” they say, “in the stories that have been told here. What’s a school but a place where everyone’s stories are told? What’s a library but a collection of stories? What’s a reader but someone who knows how to listen?”  
“The world doesn’t run on stories,” you reply, strangely defensive. 

“Doesn’t it?” 

You don’t have a response for that. 

The third time you see him, he’s drawing a city. Skyscrapers rise under a world lit by two suns. A dark planet hangs in the sky, drifting closer with every tick and every tock. He acknowledges you with a slight not and meets your eyes. You wonder how many people he’s talked to that he remembers you after meeting only twice. 

This time you sit next to him. He’s no longer in the library and has instead set himself up in a quiet corner of the campus. A raven cackles to itself in the branches of the tree above your heads. A soft breeze tickles your skin and glides softly across your face. You lay back against the rough bark and watch the sky for a time. 

You have a question. You aren’t sure if you should ask. 

“Ask,” he says. “A story for a story.” 

“Is this the type of story that’s going to steal me away? Do something strange?”

“No more than those books you read.” He shouldn’t know about that. He barely knows you. “I told you,” he says, as if in response to your thoughts. “I’ve listened.” 

“Who are you?” you ask, and then bite back a wince. It’s the type of question to get you killed. 

He laughs again. “Someone who listened once, to a story that took me up and ate me whole and spat me back out again.” The raven flutters down, and he holds out a hand. It alights softly on its perch and caws softly at him. He smiles and shakes his head, then throws the bird back into the air. His fingers are scratched from the bird’s claws. 

He turns to you. “Some people,” he begins, “some people will listen. Others will speak, and speak, and not realize when they need to listen. Others don’t realize when they need to speak, and so their stories go unheard. And once there was a child and a story, and that child chose to listen. The story took her, folded her into its tale, and then, when it was done with them, spat him back out into his first world.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be. They tell their own stories now.” You sit back up and look over his shoulder. The image on his lap is fully complete now, orange shadows reaching across gray buildings and black shadows. There’s someone silhouetted in the foreground of the picture. You swear you can see them moving. “A deal’s a deal,” he says. “A story for a story.” 

“There’s not much to tell.”

“I can listen.”

You tell him. 

Later that night, you find a portrait of you sitting on your dorm room bed, drawn in charcoal and red marker. On the back is a signature and a warning:  
Never trade yourself away.

You shudder. The picture remains tucked securely in your bag after that.

You never see the artist again.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this while procrastinating on my TAZ fic. 
> 
> *sigh*
> 
> The first picture is a piece of Homestuck fanart that was drawn for a very strange and compelling canon-divergent fic while listening to the Magnus Archives. The second is TAZ fanart, and the third is an original work that's part of a triptych I've been working on.
> 
> Original credit for Elsewhere University goes to the blog and comic on tumblr at www.elsewhereuniversity.tumblr.com


End file.
